Searching For Eden

Miranda approaches her twenty-seventh birthday determined to reinvent her life and settle down, but Joseph North, the chief of police in Abingdon, Virginia, becomes suspicious of her after finding a baby picture of his niece in her possession.

Circumstance took the author to the Persian Gulf, to Ethiopia and Africa’s great Rift Valley, to Iran, Yemen and Bahrain, and ultimately back to Turkey and though his journeyings were never a conscious search for Eden, that is what in retrospect they seem.

Eden has never fit in. He hears words that have not been spoken, and can see flashes of futures that may never come to pass. Out of his time, place and comfort zone, Eden lives inside his head, constantly haunted by the idea that there is something else. Something more. Running from those who would harm him, Eden breaks through a Divide believed only in myth and stories, and finds himself in another realm—a place, he soon discovers, he should have been in all along. Finding friends, love and completion for the first time in his life, Eden starts to wake up to who he is and sets his feet firmly on a path he can never turn away from, with his tall beautiful warrior-elf lover always at his side Hunted by those who would have his power, trying to hide from evil, Eden finds himself running through the realms in the hope he can escape his fate, lead the future down a path that will not see the worlds destroyed, and will keep Khari safe from a past that is raising its head once more.

A “certainly weird . . . strangely wonderful . . . [and] often irresistible” search to find the real Garden of Eden (The New York Times Book Review). Where, precisely, was God’s Paradise? St. Augustine had a theory. So did medieval monks, John Calvin and Christopher Columbus. But when Darwin’s theory of evolution changed our understanding of human origins, shouldn’t the desire to put a literal Eden on the map have faded away? Not so fast. This “gloriously researched, pluckily written historical and anecdotal assay of humankind’s age-old quixotic quest for the exact location of the Biblical garden” (Elle) explores an obsession that has consumed scientists and theologians alike for centuries. To this day, the search continues, taken up by amateur explorers, clergymen, scholars, engineers and educators—romantic seekers all who started with the same simple-sounding Bible verses, only to end up at a different spot on the globe: Sri Lanka, the Seychelles, the North Pole, Mesopotamia, China, Iraq—and Ohio. Inspired by an Eden seeker in her own family, “Wilensky-Lanford approaches her subjects with respect, enthusiasm and conscientious research” (San Francisco Chronicle) as she traverses a century-spanning history provoking surprising insights into where we came from, what we did wrong, and where we go from here. And it all makes for “a lively journey” (Kirkus Reviews).

Forgotten past, hidden secrets, and broken trust ... will they surrender to the power of love? Single father, Liam Conlin, used to trust in the power of good. Good cop, good husband, good father. Then he believed in the innocence of the wrong person and ended up a widower. Confidence in his intuition crushed, his new mission in life is to keep the kids safe, and the small town of Moose Head Falls, Minnesota seems like the perfect place to start over. Life on the run is hard-especially when you can't remember who you are or what you're running from. With only a name on a bracelet, Eden must fit the missing pieces of her life back together. When she wakes in a hospital bed to a pair of brooding brown eyes belonging to her rescuer, it's as if she's been reborn. Liam may hold the key to her salvation, but as Eden's memory returns and her past closes in, buried secrets may destroy all he holds dear.